Terminology Question

[CuriousFellow]

Because of a cognitive disability which takes special delight in tormenting
me with perceptual problems, particularly with respect to language, I'm
often required to seek external confirmation before I can make substantive
headway in trying to learn new things. Anything to do with computers is a
particular challenge, especially because of a certain company's penchant for
renaming/redefining things.

I haven't had much success in other forums, probably because people think
I'm some kind of troll (?), but I assure you the difficulty is quite real.
Hopefully you'll take a chance and provide some needed assistance from time
to time.

Since getting interested in programming, I keep running across references to
"workspace file" but no clear explanation of what it is. A Google search
didn't turn up much that was helpful except "this is a workspace on the
server where you can share files" on a page about "Workspace File Manager,"
and "a workspace file (e.g., filename.wor) is a plain ascii file that
contains..." on a site about some "MapBasic" or MapInfo program. Is
"workspace" synonomous with "directory" (my guess) or am I off on a wrong
tangent?

 

[Karl Heinz Buchegger]

Because of a cognitive disability which takes special delight in tormenting
me with perceptual problems, particularly with respect to language, I'm
often required to seek external confirmation before I can make substantive
headway in trying to learn new things. Anything to do with computers is a
particular challenge, especially because of a certain company's penchant for
renaming/redefining things.

I haven't had much success in other forums, probably because people think
I'm some kind of troll (?), but I assure you the difficulty is quite real.
Hopefully you'll take a chance and provide some needed assistance from time
to time.

Since getting interested in programming, I keep running across references to
"workspace file" but no clear explanation of what it is. A Google search
didn't turn up much that was helpful except "this is a workspace on the
server where you can share files" on a page about "Workspace File Manager,"
and "a workspace file (e.g., filename.wor) is a plain ascii file that
contains..." on a site about some "MapBasic" or MapInfo program. Is
"workspace" synonomous with "directory" (my guess) or am I off on a wrong
tangent?

'Workspace file' doesn't have one clear meaning. It depends on the
context in which this phrase is used. Eg. my development environment
has something called 'workspace'. In this context it means: all
files which make up the whole project. The list of these files is
stored in the workspace file.

 

[Peter van Merkerk]

Because of a cognitive disability which takes special delight in tormenting
me with perceptual problems, particularly with respect to language, I'm
often required to seek external confirmation before I can make substantive
headway in trying to learn new things. Anything to do with computers is a
particular challenge, especially because of a certain company's penchant for
renaming/redefining things.

I haven't had much success in other forums, probably because people think
I'm some kind of troll (?), but I assure you the difficulty is quite real.
Hopefully you'll take a chance and provide some needed assistance from time
to time.

Since getting interested in programming, I keep running across references to
"workspace file" but no clear explanation of what it is. A Google search
didn't turn up much that was helpful except "this is a workspace on the
server where you can share files" on a page about "Workspace File Manager,"
and "a workspace file (e.g., filename.wor) is a plain ascii file that
contains..." on a site about some "MapBasic" or MapInfo program. Is
"workspace" synonomous with "directory" (my guess) or am I off on a wrong
tangent?

What a "workspace" is cannot be answered without knowing the context; it
can mean different things in different contexts. However in the context of
the C++ language this question cannot be answered. The concept of
"workspace" is not defined in the C++ standard (IOW the question is
off-topic here), nor does it require having a "workspace" concept. As far
as the C++ language is concerned a "workspace" can be anything.

<offtopic>
Some IDE's use workspace files to store the collection of projects you are
working on. Sometimes they also store additional info like which windows
were open before you closed the IDE and other settings, so the next day you
can leave off from the point where you stopped the day before. Not
essential, but it can be convenient. If you want to know exactly what the
"workspace" is you are talking about you will have to consult the
documentation of the tool that uses them, or consult a newsgroup/forum
dedicated to that tool.
</offtopic>

 

[John M. Gabriele]

<offtopic>
Some IDE's use workspace files to store the collection of projects you are
working on. Sometimes they also store additional info like which windows
were open before you closed the IDE and other settings, so the next day you
can leave off from the point where you stopped the day before. Not
essential, but it can be convenient. If you want to know exactly what the
"workspace" is you are talking about you will have to consult the
documentation of the tool that uses them, or consult a newsgroup/forum
dedicated to that tool.
</offtopic>

Peter, fancy source code editors and IDE's like to try and organize all your
source code files into "projects". That way, when you run the editor, rather
than having to open 10 different files manually, you can just ask it to open
some project and voila -- all files are loaded (or at least easily available)
to you within the IDE.

The IDE has to store "project information" somewhere, so it creates a "project
file" (sometimes binary, sometimes text). This project file is usually only
useful to the IDE or editor that created it.

When you've got a number of projects that depend on each other (and say, you're
using your IDE to automatically build them for you), and you want to edit
portions of each of them at the same time, you can tell your IDE to group
them together by creating a "workspace". Again, it's implemented as a file
like with projects, but instead of managing individual files, it manages
projects.

If you use a nice editor like NEdit, and tools like ctags, gdb/ddd, g++ and
the binutils (yes, I agree, there should be a band named "g++ and the
binutils". ), you won't be dealing with project files or workspace files.

I'm not sure where this post would've been appropriate. Maybe at
comp.os.linux.development.apps

 

[John M. Gabriele]

Peter, [snip]

Whoops. Sorry. That previous post was directed at "Curious Fellow",
not Peter. Doh.

 

[CuriousFellow]

Thanks to all 3 of you for responding. I've only managed to install Linux so
far, not learn how to use it. But I'll try the
comp.os.linux.development.apps group if that's where you think this type of
question would be more appropriate.